Privacy

PRS for Music Limited (also referred to as 'PRS', 'we' or 'us') takes your privacy very seriously.

This policy sets out how we will make use of any personal data we collect from you as a visitor to our website, as a member or a licensee, or that we collect from third party sources. It also describes your data protection rights, including a right to object to some of the processing which we carry out. More information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the 'Your rights' section.

We may collect and process the following information about you:

Website Users: We collect personal information from visitors to our website (prsformusic.com) which includes information you provide when you create an online account to use our web based system, submit membership application forms, apply to request or take out a music licence, pay an invoice online, sign-up to receive our newsletters and publications, enter a competition or survey and when you report a problem with our website. The information you give us may include your name, address, email address and phone number, financial and credit card information (collected via a secure payment processor).

With regard to each of your visits to our website we may automatically collect technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.

We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we operate (e.g. m-magazine.co.uk). We also work closely with selected third parties (including, for example, business partners and sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services) and may receive information about you from them such as contact and payment information.

Members: In addition to information which we collect about you from your use of, or inputting of information into this website, we hold other information about you, such as your contact details, repertoire records, royalty payment history, application forms, voice recordings of telephone calls with you, correspondence with us and documents which support your application (e.g. proof of identity).

We may also obtain information about you from third party sources, such as other collecting societies and agencies which may provide us with information regarding the usage of your repertoire outside of the UK.

Licensees: In addition to information which we collect about you from your use of, or inputting of information into, this website, we hold other information about you, such as your contact details, any correspondence that you send to us, licensing application forms and information which you provide to us for calculating whether a licence is required, or the size of licence fee payable (for example, usage statistics, or revenue information).

We may also obtain information about you from third party sources, such as Ofcom (information about recently obtained licences) and credit/background check providers or banks, where background checks are conducted. We may also obtain information about you from other collecting societies for compliance and enforcement purposes or where you have a licence in place with such societies covering territories outside of the UK.

Use of information

We will use the information set out above for the following purposes:

To fulfil a contract with you, or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you: this is relevant where you become a PRS member or licensee. This includes:

verifying your identity;

taking payments from you;

communicating with you in the course of fulfilling our contract;

processing applications for membership and licences;

undertaking bank checks on prospective licensees who are individuals;

providing our services to you (such as distributing royalty payments, administering licences and organising events); and

dealing with complaints and otherwise providing customer services to you.

As required by us to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, in particular:

to provide services you have requested (including membership services);

to verify music usage under the terms of a licence, or establish whether a licence is required;

to respond to any comments, complaints, enquiries or requests you may send us, and to send you important information about PRS for Music Limited or your account;

to personalise our website, products or services for you;

to maintain and administer licensee and membership records;

to undertake bank checks on prospective licensees which are companies or business groups;

to investigate any complaints received from you or from others, about our website or our services;

to conduct market research and for strategic development/business intelligence purposes, to improve our service to you;

to exercise our contractual rights (such as those established under the Membership Agreement and licence agreements);

to monitor, improve and protect our products, content, services and websites, both online and offline;

to conduct marketing (where consent is not required). Note that this includes sharing hashed data with third party websites and/or social networks so that PRS advertisements are displayed to you (known as 'custom audience');

to administer our business in accordance with the Code of Conduct and Constitution (for example, running general meetings, running appointments to the board); and

for legal claims, compliance, regulatory and investigative purposes (for example, debt recovery) as necessary (including disclosure of such information in connection with legal process or litigation).

Where you give us consent:

we will send you direct marketing by email in relation to our services, news and events or other products and services provided by us, our affiliates and carefully selected partner organisations although these emails and/or SMS messages will always come from us;

if you are a member, we will share your contact details with the PRS for Music Members Benevolent Fund and the PRS for Music Foundation so that they can contact you directly about the work they do, opportunities available to support them and services that may be of interest to you;

if you are a member, we will share your email address with candidates for the Performing Right Society Directors’ Ballot in advance of the AGM each year so that the candidates can contact you directly by email with canvassing materials (NB. Voting and Principal Voting members are eligible to vote in the Ballot). Note that candidates may contact you with canvassing materials by post without your consent – please see the "For purposes which are required by law" section, below, for further information;

we place cookies and use similar technologies in accordance with our Cookies Policy and the information provided to you when those technologies are used; and

on other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time.

For purposes which are required by law, for example:

in response to requests by government or law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation; and

in response to requests received under the Companies Act 2006, including, for example requests to make limited member data (names and postal addresses) available to candidates for the Performing Right Society Directors’ Ballot in advance of the AGM each year so that the candidates can contact members directly by post with canvassing materials.

Withdrawing consent or otherwise objecting to direct marketing

Wherever we rely on your consent, you will always be able to withdraw that consent. You have an absolute right to opt-out of us processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes, at any time. You can do this by following the instructions in the communication where this is an electronic message, or by contacting us using the details set out below. Please note that if you do opt-out of receiving marketing emails you will still receive non-marketing emails from PRS for Music which contain essential information about your membership or licence including updates regarding royalty distributions, AGMs and any fundamental changes to how we operate as a society.

Sharing and Transfer of information

We will share member and licensee personal information with the following companies:

Performing Right Society Limited;

Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited;

International Copyright Enterprise Services Limited;

ICE Operations AB;

Network of Music Partners A/S; and

PPL PRS Limited

as appropriate, for the administration of your membership or licence.

Additionally, we may share your information with other collecting societies for the purposes of that society administering a licence outside the UK which includes the repertoire of PRS members or to enable them to pursue legal action on behalf of PRS. In the case of members, we may also share your information with other closely related organisations, such as the PRS for Music Members Benevolent Fund and the PRS Foundation when you have contacted these organisations and asked them to contact us for information about your membership or have previously given consent for us to do so. We may also share information with agents or representatives authorised to deal with us on a members' behalf, and agents or industry bodies who carry out licensing operations on our behalf.

We may also share your information with government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required for the purposes above, if mandated by law or if required for the legal protection of our legitimate interests in compliance with applicable laws.

We may also share your information with selected third parties who will process it on behalf of PRS for Music Limited for the purposes identified above. Such third parties include website hosting and maintenance providers, event booking platform providers, credit reference agencies, banks (where we have contacted them to ask for verification that you are able to make licence fee payments), marketing software providers and marketing agencies, internal systems providers (such as our client relationship management system, finance systems and communication systems), and music usage monitoring providers.

In the event that the business is sold or integrated with another business, your details may be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchaser’s adviser and will be passed to the new owners of the business.

Your information may be sent outside the European Economic Area ('EEA'):

Information about members and licensees may be sent to other collecting societies (which are located worldwide);

Information about members' repertoires is shared with other members and licensees (which are located worldwide);

Information about website users, members and licensees may be shared with third party service providers (which are located in the Bahamas, Bermuda, within the EEA, Switzerland and the USA).

We share information with other collecting societies which are outside the EEA where it is necessary to do so in order to fulfil our agreements with our members and licensees. In other cases, where information is transferred outside the EEA, and where this is to a stakeholder or vendor in a country that is not subject to an adequacy decision by the EU Commission, data is adequately protected by EU Commission approved standard contractual clauses, an appropriate Privacy Shield certification or a vendor's Processor Binding Corporate Rules. A copy of the relevant mechanism can be provided for your review on request to dataprotection@prsformusic.com.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Data Retention

Where we process membership and licensee personal data, we do this for as long as you are a member or licensee and for 6 years after this unless there is a statutory or business requirement to retain this data for a longer period.

Where we process personal data in connection with performing another type of contract (such as providing you with access to an event), we keep the data for 6 years from your last interaction with us.

Where we process personal data for marketing purposes or with your consent, we process the data until you ask us to stop and for a short period after this (to allow us to implement your requests). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your data for as long as you are a member or licensee and for 6 years after this so that we can respect your request in future.

In the event that we start to process personal data for website security purposes, we will retain it for 26 months.

Use of cookies

We use cookies and other tracking technologies on our website and in some of our emails. For more details on the cookies and tracking technologies which we use, and the purposes for which we use them, see our Cookie policy.

Registered users

Certain sections of this website are only open to registered users and give those registered users the ability to review and modify personal information previously provided to us. We ask that you do not share user names, passwords or any other secure access information with anyone – you are responsible for keeping this information confidential and secure. You must notify us in the event that such information is revealed to, or accessed by, anyone else or where you become aware of a breach of confidentiality or any unauthorised use of this website.

Other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites which are outside our control and are not covered by this policy. We encourage you to read the privacy policies on the other websites you visit.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data; and to obtain the personal data you provide to us for a contract or with your consent in a structured, machine readable format, and to ask us to share (port) this data to another controller.

In addition, you can object to the processing of your personal data in some circumstances (in particular, where we don’t have to process the data to meet a contractual or other legal requirement, or where we are using the data for direct marketing).

These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping.

To exercise any of these rights, you can get in touch with us using the details set out at the end of this Policy. If you have unresolved concerns, you have the right to complain to an EU data protection authority where you live, work or where you believe a breach may have occurred. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In order to register as a member, to obtain a licence or to create an online account, the provision of certain information is mandatory: if relevant data is not provided, then we will not be able to administer your membership or licence. All other provision of your information is optional. Where you do not provide optional information, we cannot specifically tailor our services to you for example, inform you about events or news relevant to your genre.

Changes to this privacy policy

Any changes we make to our privacy policy will be posted on this page. Please check to see if any updates or changes have been made. This policy was last reviewed on 25 January 2019.

Contact us

The data controller is PRS for Music Limited. Please send any questions on this privacy policy to the following address:
Data Protection Queries
Legal Department
PRS for Music Limited
2 Pancras Square
London N1C 4AG